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[CyclopsRock]

first, you have to understand what it actually takes for intelligent life to simply evolve from a barren planet. so many low-probability events have to line up perfectly. that process takes time + luck + lots of attempts.

i'm making up numbers at this point, but maybe there's a 1% chance that this can happen within 4 billion years and a 1% chance that this fails to happen within 400 billion years. the likely outcomes are somewhere in between those extremes

just because it happened "quickly" on Earth doesn't mean it's likely to happen as quickly on other Earth-like planets. there's reason to believe that it's likely for Earth to be an outlier rather than the average case scenario

Well, us being the first is one of the potential explanations but we'd be a fucker of an outlier. Just within our galaxy there are billions upon billions of planets where it's estimated earth-like life could potentially come into being. The thing is, in the last 1,000 years we've gone from not being able to cross the Atlantic to the ISS. In fact, in the first 70 years of the 20th century we went from the Wright Brothers' barely getting off the ground to the Saturn V and Apollo missions to the moon. The entirety of recorded human history is about 6,000 years. But this is the blink of an eye in galactic terms. As such, for us to not hear anyone else out there, it is possible we're the first, but we'd need to be the absolute first. Just being near the top isn't good enough. So it's not necessarily a case of us being an outlier but rather the outlier.

 

[Aureon]

Is this ("he's a famous scientist") supposed to be an argument?

For "Has basic competence in physics"?
Yeah. A pretty strong one, too.

 

[Semajer]

they keep an eye on us

they are the reason we have math, science and technology

they are among us and control the earth

they are the illuminati

Pigeons?

 

[the_batman]

the universe is a big sumbitch. not only will it take forever to get somewhere, you have to know which way to go first.

or it could just be the Reapers.

 

[KO Traveling Hobo]

they keep an eye on us

they are the reason we have math, science and technology

they are among us and control the earth

they are the illuminati

oh no

they're onto you

get out of there, triplestation

 

[rokkerkory]

We're gonna be extinct within like 100 years the way we are going with over population anyways. Aliens will come and just see what used to be.

 

[Eumi]

It's a kinda silly argument since we don't actually have any idea how long it would take for a civilisation to become space-faring, nor how long any other civilisations have existed.

There is a very real chance that we are the most advanced species in the universe.

 

[God Dayumm]

There is probably no intelligent life anywhere in our vicinity so we will go extinct before we can establish communication with an alien civilization, no matter how technologically advanced they or us become.